Scheduled release of flood maps has lawmakers on edge

Sunday

Jun 25, 2006 at 12:01 AM

SACRAMENTO - The Federal Emergency Management Agency is slated to release a new set of flood maps in early October that could force Central Valley cities to spend millions on repairing local levees to keep every homeowner in town from having to spend roughly $1,200 a year on mandatory flood insurance.

Hank Shaw

SACRAMENTO - The Federal Emergency Management Agency is slated to release a new set of flood maps in early October that could force Central Valley cities to spend millions on repairing local levees to keep every homeowner in town from having to spend roughly $1,200 a year on mandatory flood insurance.

On Wednesday, Reps. Dennis Cardoza of Merced, Richard Pombo of Tracy and 16 other California representatives asked FEMA to delay release of those maps, which could send shock waves through their constituencies just weeks before the November election.

Not only will all 18 lawmakers be up for re-election, a $4.5 billion levee-repair bond also will be on the ballot. It is unclear what effect the release would have on the electorate.

Although the initial maps would not have the force of law, they would put communities such as Lathrop on notice that their levees are not up to snuff. Stockton faced a similar situation in 1995.

This round is different, however, because FEMA announced in August it would finally enforce laws already on the books requiring a stricterevaluation of levees that protect homes. Now a levee's internal construction will become more of a factor in evaluating its strength - bad news for Valley levees, many of which are essentially unengineered mounds of dirt.

Levees around Mossdale Landing in Lathrop are particularly suspect, according to state flood experts. Lathrop officials disagree, noting that their levees meet the federal standard, which allows for a one-in-100 chance of it failing every year.

Local flood officials have been wrangling with FEMA over the ground rules of the new evaluation, which are still in flux.

"It's hard to have a fight when we don't know what the battle's for," said Chuck Kelley, who runs the flood management section of the San Joaquin County Public Works Department.

And FEMA has been characteristically tough to deal with, officials say: Kelley said the first face-to-face meeting between the agency and San Joaquin County officials will not take place until this week.

Home builders worry that the preliminary maps could chill an already soft housing market by placing whole subdivisions into a flood plain.

The housing industry is among the largest contributors to the two congressmen; The Grupe Co. held a unique joint fund-raiser for Pombo and Cardoza last year. Grupe is one of many companies building behind levees set for re-evaluation.

Staffers for Cardoza and Pombo say politics has nothing to do with their decision.

"We're not trying to stop FEMA," Cardoza Chief of Staff Jennifer Walsh said. "It's the process that we're questioning. We think the time line given us is unworkable."

Walsh said release of the preliminary maps on such short notice could create a scenario in which a city with an old - but sound - levee cannot prove it to FEMA before the new maps emerge, falsely placing residents living behind the levee into the official flood plain.

"It's basically guilty until proven innocent," Walsh said. "This is bad for our constituents. They're going to be in a panic about living in a flood plain. There's a shock factor involved."

Ron Stork of the environmental group Friends of the River suggested that the proposed delay represents a power move by nervous members of Congress doing the bidding of their friends in the housing industry.

"They're trying to intimidate FEMA from doing its job," Stork said. "I've never met a congressman who wanted his community mapped into a flood plain - even if it is.

"And flood plain developers are terrified at even the release of the preliminary maps because it could reveal them for who they are: flood plain developers."

In 1997, the Valley's last big flood, thousands of acres of farmland and hundreds of homes were flooded.

FEMA - as well as most state flood experts - consider the 1997 event a "typical" 100-year flood. Should FEMA prevail, it would place huge swaths of those counties into the flood plain, an expensive and politically dicey dilemma for local politicians.